Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Set in the year 1666, Brooks' first novel is a surpisingly engaging fictional account of a town quarantined by the Plague in rural England. Fans of well written historical fiction would do well to check this story out. Young Anna Frith, widow and mother of two young boys, is a housemaid in the rectory of one Reverend Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, when the Plague strikes her household. Eventually the Plague spreads throughout the village, and the Reverend decides to quarantine the village to stop the spread elsewhere. The consequences of his decision will touch all of the main characters, especially Anna. What makes the novel work are the complex relationships the novelist explores between characters, especially Anna and the reverend's wife, Elinor. Deeply loving, kind, and generous, Elinor is a former aristocrat, who has, on the surface, come down in the world to marry Reverend Mompellion. How do people, under enormous stress and strain, interact and coexist with one another? What makes one society thrive and another fall apart? Brooks examines these questions and, in the process, writes a moving and absorbing historical novel.